Lee Eisler's schedule, planning recup time

My choreography teacher, Lee Eisler, head of JumpStart dance company, once shared her rehearsal schedule. It went like this:

2 weeks -- RESEARCH I, with dancers
3 weeks -- Digest, choreograph, prepare, on her own
2 weeks -- RESEARCH II, with dancers
3 weeks -- Digest, choreograph, finalize, on her own
3 weeks -- BUILD, with dancers
SHOW

What I remember is that at the end of the second weekend in that last BUILD section, Lee scheduled a 3-day-weekend for everyone. No rehearsing, no teching, nothing -- just downtime.

"I found that if I don't do that at exactly that point in the schedule, people break down -- they get sick, or injured. I experimented, and that's what works."

I will start doing the same -- building in a 3-day weekend before tech week. We are at exactly that point and people are dropping like flies.

Painted blessings into the set

Built the set all day, rehearsed on it at night. Painted the set all day, rehearsed on it at night. I go back early tomorrow for the third day, to build more set then rehearse all day. I am tired.

I painted blessings into the set today. I know where each name is on the set. I would think the name and the blessing as I drew the brush along, fat swaths of dark green, dark blue, white.

"I love Holly.
I love Keith.
I love PJ.
I love Jeff.
I love Lara.
I love Jeff.
I love Jenni.
I love Lois.
I love Alan Ayckbourn.
I love Ben.
I love Ann and Frank and Rowan.
I love Stanislavski.
I love Chekhov.
I love Eugenio.
I love Leonid.
I love Mark."

Hard rehearsal tonight. Tired sick people, stuff fraying and breaking, one holy breakthrough. But good nonetheless -- there was something nourishing about finally getting to work on the set. Like, "Ah, so THIS is how it will be."

"What a long strange trip it's been," I thought more than once today.

"I can't do your play because my dog got cast in a film"

One of the actors in Noir just emailed, saying she is withdrawing.

"I can't do your play because my dog just got cast in a film whose shooting schedule conflicts with rehearsals."

I had to laugh. And groan. I could not make stuff like this up. I sent the title to the guy at explodingdog.com, who illustrates sayings.

A few years ago I wrote a short play called Spellbinders. I was naming all the characters after elements of Nature, and was afraid I'd gone too far. "Do you think it's okay to have a guy named River?" I asked the actors. "I knew a boy named Field," said one woman thoughtfully.

Reality is stranger, and more true.

You better be blogging

I get home from rehearsal two nights ago. It's late. I log in. Three minutes into checking my mail, I get an IM from my friend, Rob.

"You better be blogging," he begins, "Because I have been looking at this same dang post for three days."

I found that incredibly encouraging. The last few months have been full of three-day stretches; I'll pick up the pace.

Cool new Starbucks CD program

You know how Starbucks has it's White CD line? Where an artist, say Yo-Yo Ma, will choose 15 songs by his favorite artists, and they'll sell it as "Yo-Yo's favorite songs" or whatever? Well, I just discovered this genius thing they're doing -- they're now selling the COMPANION volume -- where instead of Yo-Yo picking all his friends' songs, they pick his. These come in a dark cover.

I saw yesterday, the two Joni Mitchell ones. The White Album, where she picked her friends' songs. And the Dark Album -- much more exciting to me -- where her friends picked hers.

Graham Nash's favorite Joni Mitchell song is "Blue."

I love this on all levels -- the organicity, the evolution, the innovation, the weave of love and care now wrapped around those songs, the lineage, the cool-compilation-now-available-to-me.... everything.

The last 90%

There is a saying in software: "There is the first 90% of the project... and then there is the last 90%."

We are in the last 90% with our play. It is a critical mass/momentum feeling. There is a mountain of work which only can be done now, in the theatre, on set. And, there is another mountain which can only happen in the actors after the whole play is built, and they know the scope of the work.

"Oh, it's THIS big. Okay. Now I know what I'm dealing with, and what to work on." It's like finishing framing a house. Somehow your body knows, then, how much is left to do, and all the calibration gets sharper. It IS another 90% of work; but it's a different kind of work.

Tonight we build the end of the play.

No longer rescue

For my first seven years of theatre practice, any problem I saw in my rehearsals or shows, I figured was my fault -- that I was still a rookie director, and didn't know my craft yet, and it was my responsibility to a) fix the local problem, and b) learn my craft better to prevent such problems in the future.

After living at the Odin Teatret, I still see the same things. It still occurs to me as the first option to check whether I am doing something wrong or sub-optimal. And, regardless of the answer, I check to see if there's anything I can do to fix it. But I am better able, now, to differentiate which things are my responsibility. I look with cool eyes, not hot ones.

Michele McCarthy, of McCarthy Technologies, says there is one role that always appears in teams. The other roles may or may not appear, but the Scapegoat -- the person whom the whole team "decides" is "the problem" -- always emerges. The solution, we discovered years ago, was not to pay attention to the Scapegoat. Instead of rewarding the worst performer with all the attention, reward your BEST performer with all the attention.

I have done this in acting classes for years. The people who are committed and going deep get a lot of my time. The ones who are wavery, get less and less. I find it is not so different with this play.

There are many levels on which I no longer rescue.

Living in the present

A month ago, I decided to stop blogging about things that might happen and wait until they did, especially on the job front.

In the meantime, both plays are cooking. Several actors from my class are going to help with the Next Step play; if they work backstage on Doors, they'll be able to join the company, which puts them upstream for the next play.

My car, which I adore, has come to seem like a horse. I pay the same constant attention to its mutterings and murmurs that I used to, to my horse's gait and ears and moods. Being this intimate and faithful to my car makes me feel... responsible. Good. Like a farmer who knows his cows. These days, I always know my mileage, within 10 miles. I know how the CV joints are sounding, whether the brakes are making that pulling sound, how the steering wheel is doing, when it last got oil, where it is on gas. Routine stuff for many folks, but for me it's a connection at a deeper level.

A friend was talking about the tenacity of habits today; their power and force. I feel like I am building the habit of self-care, in the area of my car; it's muscular.

Just finished Michael Crichton's book, Prey, about a nanotech swam gone wrong. I liked it. It had the same general story-shape as Jurassic Park -- replace "impossibly intelligent, ferocious, man-hunting velociraptor dinosaur" for "impossibly intelligent, ferocious, man-hunting nanotech swarm", and you've got the story. I love all the mind-candy -- bacteria, viruses, evolution, flocking, distributed-data-networks, convergence. Although, he did get basically the whole scale of it wrong; there's no reason to have nanoparticles appear as a black swarm. At their scale, they could invisibly infiltrate practically anything. It's like us appearing as planets.

Rehearsal for Doors was fun tonight; a commedia scene, with commedia blocking. Those beautiful winds, blowing actors across the stage like skeedy-weedies.

Communicating Doors pic

PJ Mohn as RUELLA & Jennifer Kay as JESSICA

Quantum valentine

Wild roses, for Valentine's Day

We're reading the final Noir script yesterday. We have a beautiful room at Bellevue Community College -- a wall of windows looking at winter trees and white sky. All the furniture has been folded and stacked at the back of the room, so it's one big empty space, leading to the sky.

"Denise won't be here today," I said. "She owns a florist shop, and the day before Valentine's Day is their busiest of the year."

"Which florist?" someone asked.

"Overlake Florist."

"Oh MAN!" said Keith, "That's my favorite florist."

"That's where he always sends me flowers from," said Lara. "They deliver them to my work."

"They have my card on file there," said Keith.

"Great," I said. "Then you can drop off her script." Silence. They looked at me blankly.

"I have no idea where it IS," he said.

That's us, in 2005 -- a great florist, two of her faithful customers, encircled within one small play, having no idea who each other is, or even where they are physically from. Strongly-tied strangers. Theatre productions are made of strongly-tied strangers; it was eerily cool to see that replicated in our real-world roles.

For some reason, that whole interaction felt like a quantum Valentine to me.

One of my favorite parts of life is experiencing the same people in different roles. Today you are my slow-skating defense partner with a good shot, tomorrow you are the ER doctor sewing up my uninsured boyfriend's face on your kitchen table, and the next day you are the dad with wife and five kids, welcoming me to your home for Christmas dinner. What tickles me is how completely we shift. When he's on defense, I'm like, "C'MON, Vince, skate FASTER." When he's the ER doc, I'm practically not even looking at him, I'm so in awe. When he's the dad, I'm comfortably ignoring him to concentrate on the kids. Same guy. Same me. Shift, shift, shift.

Happy Valentine's day, y'all. May yours be strong, strange, and filled with charm.

Hot deep actors

I've had a rare run of three rehearsals in a row with the same actors. Our first rehearsal was dangerous and raw, second was hot and easy, third was weary but accomplished. The scene we built was one of those you can only find when everyone's hot and deep -- and the unconsciouses have come out to play.

Now that I have learned to trust Ayckbourn like Shakespeare, I'm finding mini-scenes all over the place. Which means I can build them: Pile-Up, then Story Hour, then Mermaids then Girl Talk then...

... ahhh.

When it really gets going like this, it's all Chekhov.

Kaddish for Arthur Miller

Arthur Aster Miller, 1915 - 2005

Playwright Arthur Miller died yesterday. You can find a beautiful bio with fantastic pictures of him, written while he was still alive, here -- fittingly, in the notes of a Sheffield theatre which was producing one of his plays, The Crucible.

The Crucible was the first play I appeared in, in high school. I played Mary Warren, not due to any great acting ability, but due to a then-near-eidetic audio memory.

Miller was the son of a Polish Jew, whose family came here early in the 20th century. Miller's plays -- and life -- are about ethics, particularly about persecution. The Crucible is about the fanatic persecution of the Salem witch trials, written during the McCarthy era when Miller, himself, was refusing to testify against other artists. Death of a Salesman is about a workman, let go because of age, in an era before this was illegal, leading to his suicide. Salesman is one of the few plays known to have changed history. The then-head of one of New York's largest department stores, rode home after seeing the play, and wrote a memo to all his employees, declaring that hereafter none of his store's employees would ever be let go because of age.

Here's why I like Miller: 1) He was an ethical man. 2) He consistently took courageous, even dangerous or illegal, action for what he believed in, and 3) he supported other people, and 4) he wrote good plays.

Here is the moment Miller became real to me.

I was reading Hamlet And The Baker's Son, by Brazilian theatre director, Augusto Boal. Boal is a joyous, dark, fiery, political man. His type of theatre, "Theatre of the Oppressed," evolved to cross boundaries, where theatre begins to be used in real life, as real life, even to change real life. "Legislative Theatre," which grew out of it, is a construct where people act out a situation that is being considered in court, or for political review; then the legislators vote after seeing the enactment. It has led to much more complex, profound consideration of the matter under discussion.


Brazilian director Augusto Boal, whose life Miller saved

So Boal is an increasingly powerful director, things are heating up in Brazil, and he leaves the country for a while. When he comes back, they arrest him, put him in jail, and begin to torture him. He said it was utterly surreal. First, that he would be arrested. Second, that he would be walked through a normal office full of people and computers, to get to the stairs to the dungeon. And third, that he would be tortured.

Augusto is down there, and he asks the torturers, "Why are you torturing me?" "Because you say bad things about Brazil in other countries," they said. "Like what?" he asked. "You say we torture people," they answered. And, even in jail, strung up on a metal bar, he had to laugh.

In that moment, Augusto Boal became real to me. Even in such conditions, he stayed human, curious.

"But," said the torturers, "We are torturing you with respect. Because you are a great artist." "How would you torture me without respect?" he asked. They described the difference. Indeed, it was much worse than being tortured with respect. Again, Boal had to laugh.

Two months later, Boal was no longer laughing. He was crumbling, in a Brazilian prison, being systematically tortured and broken.

Which is when Arthur Miller, an old playwright in New England who had never met him, learned what was going on. Instantly, Miller began a letter-writing campaign, and organized a world-wide letter-writing campaign to the Brazilian authorities. This saved Boal's life. He was tortured for another month, until finally, reluctantly, they released him.

THAT is the Arthur Miller I am respecting, honoring, and mourning. Because, at some level, that is the kind of person I want to become -- political, passionate, quick & fierce to act, persistent, courageous, ethical.

And, just to finish the Boal story -- two weeks after his release, he found himself at the State University of New York. "Again, utterly surreal," he said. So in the workshop, he had all the actors work with iron bars, strung up the same way he had been tortured -- though, needless to say, not long enough to hurt them. "I could only understand what had been done to me," he said, "By bringing it into my world. Into the context where I am used to investigating complicated matters."

Arthur Miller brought us into his world -- his educated, principled, persecuted, New England Yankee, Jewish world. Miller belongs to my pantheon of mostly-Polish-and-Russian theatre folk with whom I resonate so strongly.

Miller was married, with two kids, when he met Marilyn Monroe. It rocked his world. Soon, he had divorced, and married Marilyn. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," he has said of their marriage, and never renounced either truth.


Miller with his second wife, Marilyn Monroe

When their marriage dissolved, after five years or so, he married Austrian photographer Inge Morath, a dark beautiful private woman with a gift for languages, with whom he travelled to many other countries.


Miller with his third wife, Inge Morath

They traveled to Beijing where Miller directed China's first-ever production of Death Of A Salesman, soon after China's borders first opened.


Miller's book about directing Death of A Salesman in China

Time for rehearsal.



Thank you for the plays, your good efforts, and all the fish. Rest in peace, Arthur Miller.

Message from Mark (Iceman)

Here's an update from Mark, my acting teacher & writer of the Iceward Bound blog. A slice o' Antarctic life, including a bottom-of-the-world theatre production. Enjoy.
============================================
2/12/2005

Looking Up From The Bottom Of The World

Well, I'm rounding the corner and nearing the end of
my stint in Antarctica. It's been a long, LONG season
and while I'm limping home a bit at the moment, it's
been a very good season all the way around.

In sporting terms, I've definitely left everything I
had on the playing field. The gas tank is empty. Two
more weeks to go and I'm really just going day by day
and not counting the time. Mentally, I'm tired.
Physically, I've been ill twice this season, once for
around three weeks, and the current illness has been
with me for about a week now.

We've just finished our vessel offload and backload.
We normally work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. When
the vessel comes in, I go to 12 hour shifts with no
days off until the vessel loading is complete. In
this case, that meant 13 consecutive work days at 12
hours per day. The day the boat left, I got sick. I
got to spend my one day off in bed with a fever, a
runny nose, a red eye and a hacking cough.

Some fun, eh?

Let's see...what's happened since my last note...

My theater production went VERY well. Long-time
Antarctic veterans proclaimed it by far and away the
best piece of theater ever produced down here, and
gave it high marks for professionalism, the set, sound
and lights, as well as the acting and the overall
experience.

Everyone loved the shows (a collection of short,
one-act plays) and loved that there wasn't anything
about Antarctica in any of them...that they felt truly
transported to a real night at the theater. It was
escapism at its best.

I was most proud of taking a very sterile
garage/warehouse and turning it into a theater with
personality. There were audible oohs and ahhs when
folks walked into the building because they were so
used to seeing one way, and it really looked like a
nice 75-seat blackbox theater with an interesting set,
a good sound system and a lighting grid.

I was VERY proud of the lighting. I had 16 lighting
instruments, which consisted of 6 instruments with 500
watt car headlights for lamps, 2 instruments with 300
watt porch flood lights for lamps, and 8 coffee cans
with 100 watt light bulbs in them.

There was nothing to shutter the lights with other
than where I could hang them off of various plumbing,
electrical and fire extinguisher system pipes or the
steel girders of the building itself. I could
position lights so their beam would be partially
blocked by either a set piece or a railing or another
instrument in order to create lighting areas.

For control of the lights, I had 6 jerry-rigged
channels consisting of home light switches with
rheostats. To make lights go up or down, I'd have to
turn 3 or 4 knobs at the same time which is no easy
task and take a bit of contortion to accomplish.

And it all went smoothly.

It's a geeky accomplishment, I know. Imagine making
an automobile out of a bunch of duct tape, a lawnmower
engine and a shopping cart. That's what it felt
like--a total MacGyver job and the show really did
look professional.

The actors were all wonderful, put in a lot of work
and it showed. I acted in one piece, directed
another, built/painted the set, produced and directed
the production as a whole, so a lot of my sweat and
soul went into it.

It's not the best piece of theater I've ever done, but
it's easily the piece of theater I'm most proud of for
how it came together with the resources we had.

I think there were a few videos of the show that were
made. I haven't seen them yet and I was too busy to
get pictures...maybe someone on station has, but I
haven't seen them yet. I hope to have something to
show by the time I get home.

If not..well..that makes it the perfect piece of
theater, I guess. Alive for only a moment in
time...and in the collective memory of those who saw
it.

That's good enough for me.

After the theater...well...it's been all vessel
offload and backload. I wrote about half of the
articles that came out in our spoof newspaper, The
Moon. (the regular paper is called the Antarctic Sun,
so it's appropriate that the satirical version of it
is called The Antarctic Moon). Copies available when
I get home upon request.

There was some pretty funny stuff in there, I have to
admit. It's a real hoot to see people read your
stuff, not know who wrote it and they're laughing.
The Moon is officially banned by the NSF (who pays the
bills around here) and they seriously go around
picking up copies when they come out and destroy them.

Really. The good folks have NO sense of humor and
don't understand that if we don't laugh at life down
here, we'd all go crazy.

Then again, maybe we're crazy to start with.

Got my season eval today, and I'm VERY proud to say
that I have received the first-ever "5" rating in my
group. Five is the highest you can get, and since our
stated metric is perfection, my boss Michael has been
told that a 5 simply isn't possible.

He had to fight like heck to get me a 4 level last
year. HR was insisting that with our metric, 3 was
the best possible and they rejected my eval 3
different times. A 4 rating requires the signature of
Michaels boss, and HIS boss.

A 5 rating requires those signatures, the approval of
the station manager and a VP back in Denver who has
never met me.

Michael was told last year that "there ain't no such
thing as a 5". It's only there because Raytheon feels
like that have to give the illusion that there are two
performance levels above "meets expectations".

I really set out to get another 4 this year as my
goal, but I also talked Michael into a process for how
to get a 5 approved. That we needed more measureable
metrics to rate our customer satisfaction and the
level of service we give beyond just anecdotal
eveidence.

The 4 I got last year was the first one that Michael
had ever gotten approved from his group. The 5 this
year...well...I'm proud of that. They said it wasn't
possible.

I love a challenge like that.

It HAS been a good year and yeah, I do deserve it. In
a company culture noted for its negativity and finger
pointing, I had 6 written commendations personally.
Our group exceeded the service levels we set last
year. I did a hell of a lot of community service work
that made both myself and my department a lot more
visible on station.

The difference the rating makes in my end-of-season
bonus is negligible--maybe $125 over my 4 level last
year, which was maybe $150 over getting a 3 level.

I'm proud because I really don't like Raytheon and
it's corporate culture that says "there ain't no such
thing as a 5". Well...yes there is. There are a LOT
of 5's around this town who don't get the recognition
they deserve. I just wanted to show that it could be
done.

Maybe I'll grow up one of these days. But that's
still an irresistable urge for me. Tell me something
can't be done and I'll show you how it can be...and
then go do it.

It's the simple stuff I have problems with. ;-)

Anyway...its time for lots of goodbyes now as the
station starts to clear. I'm on the next-to-last
flight again, which means I'm going to a gazillion
farewell parties, made all that much more poignant
because I'm done here. I won't be returning.

It's been a wonderful, grand, interesting adventure.
Something I'll always cherish and give thoughts to
coming back here...but realistically, I doubt that I
will. I'd still love to do a winter here and would
still love to spend time in a remote camp, but I'm
okay if those dreams never come to fruition.

I wanted to come here to experience what it would be
like to live in space...isolated, with a small group
of people, reliant on the resources you could carry
and nothing else.

It's not quite THAT stringent here, but it's close.
There's a lot of scientific research that goes on here
that is tied directly to the space program. They study
how we live down here to build models on how folks
will live in space.

I don't mind being a guinea pig. It's been fun. Hard
work, but fun.

I'll miss the air down here, and the views. Being
able to see for a couple of hundred miles in any
direction is intoxicating...to see the world on that
large a scale. To be able to see a balloon floating
at 120,000 feet and watch a payload be released from
the balloon with the naked eye at that altitude from a
distance of 150 miles is amazing.

To feel this air in my lungs...taking huge gulps of
the cleanest air on earth. It's very
refreshing...invigorating.

The people here are amazing. Eclectic. Intelligent.
Incredibly multi-talented. Interesting. ALIVE.

It will be a few years yet before I get good
perspective in this experience and learn how it's
changed me...how I've grown, but as I come to the end
of it, I realize it's having a significant influence
on me. This wasn't just a job and certainly wasn't
just an adventure.

Just as theater has given me a unique perspective on
reality...and the military has taught me important
life lessons...and being in Silicon Valley at the
height of the dotcom frenzy was an education into
itself...

...being in Antarctica is life-changing. It ain't
just a song lyric...if you can make it here...you can
make it anywhere. The harshness and difficulty of
life down here just makes everything else seem easy in
comparison.

And so...in two weeks...after doing much damage to my
liver from goodbye parties...and much strain to my
heart saying goodbye to a place and people that I
love...I'll be off on vacation. Still not sure where
yet. Definitely New Zealand, possibly Australia, Fiji
or Thailand.

Back home in CA by April 1--my brother retires from
HIS great adventure (30 years as a special forces op
in the military) on April 2 and I wouldn't miss that
for anything. Back to Tahoe by April 5 to teach
again. I hope I'm sobered up from Al's party by then.

With any luck, I'll be producing the Arts & Music
Festival this summer, directing a few shows and having
my own theater to play in...and a community to share
my passion for the theater with.

It's a new beginning. Gotta love those.

I hope to write once more before I leave the ice. I
hope the winter is going well for everyone back in the
States. I'm looking forward to seeing all of you
soon!

Much love,
mark

=====
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

--Albert Einstein

Finally

Built the top of Act Two today. Finally, something translucent. Tonight's rehearsal came straight out of the Stumble -- whatever dark thing is tearing and breaking, it's getting more ragged. More dark, more real.

The oil light is back on in my car, and the dipstick was dry. Guess I have a leak after all. I'll put cardboard down tomorrow to check.

I keep feeling a karmic connection between the destruction & tearage in the play, and in all the vehicles.

Coyote winds.

Beautiful actors

So last night's Stumble of Act One actually took place, for the first time, on the stage where we will perform.

The actors were beautiful. After weeks of hard work learning lines and blocking, often at the pace of a scene a day, last night they transfigured. For the first time I could glimpse the play at pace, and who OUR characters are becoming. I could see the actual get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way menace of the killer, Julian. The Great-Dane-puppy joy of the young house detective, Harold. The ocean-liner command of the stage, of Ruella. The sheer streaks of light and lightning of Poopay. The intriguing startling enigma of Reece. The hummingbird lightness, with floating silk peach gown, of Jessica.

It's like watching molten lead begin to flash and glint as it alchemically transforms to gold.

I came away from the actors inspired, determined to make straight in the desert a highway for their toil.

Fantastic costumes

This is the first time I've had a Costume Designer like Bart's Caitlin Ward -- someone sure, fine, high-strung, with an eye and sense for clothes that just won't quit. The looks Lara thinks of are so far beyond anything I would think of -- and they just work, and work, and work.

It was like fresh winds sweeping through a house, leaving it clean-scented.

Her work is delicate, strong, beautiful. The dominatrix costume is striking, unusual, and about to become more so with tailoring. It's like a spotlight that stays on that actress. Ruella's dressing gown is cut and draped of heavy satin, constructed to fall like a tailored evening gown, but with the soft slinkiness of bedwear. Your eye lingers on the actress, because the clothes and bearing are so beautiful.

Costumes are a blessing. Costumes are a portal. I am grateful for these costumes, and for Lara.

Language play, car karma

We did our first Stumble of Act One, for Communicating Doors last night. I was heartened.

It's a language play. The playwright is good enough that, as with Shakespeare, each scene stands on its own. Just lay them next to each other, and let resonance take care of the rest.

Ayckbourn, the playwright, is an Enlish author. We are doing the play without accents, but the language still requires that pace, to unleash. Like Shakespeare again -- or commedia -- you find it ON the line.

"Think faster," says Bart Sher.

It makes a big difference, which actors are speaking prose and which are speaking poetry. The language needs to lift, float, fly, bite.

My other discovery is something much more ephemeral -- at 2:00am last night I woke bolt upright, realizing, "The rehearsal room has become polluted. Too much of the real world has crept into it." To clean it up is simple but serious. Re-establishing sacred space is crucial.

I have been so worried about mastering speed-blocking, that I haven't been tending to the spiritual side of the work. At some level, I've been resenting speed-blocking, and the need for it. But now that I've gotten the hang of it, and can relax and look up -- plus, no doubt, having a good Stumble helped -- NOW it's time to settle in to the spiritual zone.

This is also true, fractally, on the life level -- I have been so worried about generating income & finding a job, that I haven't been connecting to god or tending to my spiritual needs.

We have had wild car karma around this play -- cars are blowing up, breaking down, running down, disappearing, reappearing. A major destruction vibe -- with something wilder, more Coyote in the feel.

That was Act One. We are ready for Act Two.

What struck me during check-ins last night was how broken-open and human the room was. There is nowhere a group of open humans cannot go. We are rough and raw and soft enough now, hang-listening and lost. Like bread that has been kneaded, and can now spontaneously grow and rise.

Life coaching

I'm hitting my stride with Life Coaching. I just got my second client, and I'm starting to find my ground. It helps me that it is a lineage practice: I have a coach and I am a coach. I feel like a salmon in a clear-running stream.

I treat it like rehearsal. The same respect, focus, and intent ( (( l i s t e n i n g ) ) ) for the winds. The same granite -- "We're going somewhere we've never been, I don't know where it is, I'll know it when I see it." When we begin, I picture the air as dark grey -- literally, I am envisioning a mountain, dark grey Alaskan scarp -- and I picture my face as a mountain too, craggy and etched like Willie Nelson's. A serious summoning, requiring attention in all realms.

"Sit like a mountain," said Sogyal Rinpoche. "Sit like this." He rearranged his maroon & saffron robes, settled, and energetically vanished. There was no disturbance in the air around or through him. Not stillness, but absence.

I sat down today to write something thoroughly concrete, to ground the blog as it were. And here I am, off turning into mountains that disappear.

Iron Goddess tea, given circumstances

It's a peculiar sensation to be, 5 days a week, building a play in blindingly short time -- for my process, anyway -- and 2 days a week be building another play with plenty of time. Obviously, the second play is shorter than the first one. And oceans deeper.

I feel like this is one big koan.

The best handle I have on it so far is finding people who have done big plays in even less time, without feeling rushed. Just knowing it's possible, even easy for some people, gives me hope. Like when you know a differential equation is solvable.

Sigh.

On other fronts -- Marina, a Russian/American actress in my class, took me to Thai food last night, to catch up on class which she'd had to miss. For any of you in the Seattle area, check out Thin Pan Noodles, a Thai restaurant in Kirkland -- and especially, try their thin pan noodles. Like pad see yew, but tastier.

Class yesterday was fantastic. Wild, bulgy, all kinds of breakthroughs. We did our last slowtens -- with two people with foot problems and one with hip problems, this form is not really available for us -- and they were beautiful. We did them holding a piece of Nature we'd just gathered from the rainy day outside -- a twig, a purple flower & forked stick, a small bit of leafy bud, a spidery branch, a tall leafy branch, a prickly twig. On the first cross, the people interacted. On the turn, the people disappeared and the Nature interacted.

I was happy with my introduction to Stanislavski's system, to how to meet the text. "Come to the text as to a lover," I began. And, "The playwright listens to god, and writes down what he hears. This takes all his attention." I KNOW things about texts now. About Stanislavski. For the first several years I taught, I repeated what my teachers had said -- but now I have developed that webbed underwork, the experience to know WHY we do this, and how it serves us. How sometimes it is our only lifeline.

As time goes on, I feel increasingly responsible to transmit the lineage precisely. In the early years, I was drunk with the golden moment -- I just wanted to immerse the actors in NOW, in THIS, in HUMAN BEAUTY, and leave them shining.

Leonid Anisimov says, "Do not teach your students to be students. Teach them to be teachers."

It is only now, my seventh year of teaching, that I am starting to know how to do that.

I think the Odin had a lot to do with it. While I was there, working with the apprentice actors, I just thought, "This is fun." I didn't want to leave it. After I got home, I started to realize how important it was. At Christmas, I heard from the Odin apprentices and realized -- it was one of the most important things any of us did, all year.

This present moment is all we have.

I always turn into a ballet master about week 4 -- suddenly impatient and harsh about the rules that must be followed, for the deeper work to emerge. It's related to cracking -- the same kind of insane climbing-out-of-my-skin pressure at being so close, and yet still outside the door. I HAVE to go in, we all do.

We had an incredible Moment of Beauty yesterday. Lyon brought a $50/pound oolong tea which he'd gotten in Hong Kong. Iron Goddess tea. He also brought four small and four tiny dark earthen teacups, set out on curling potholders; a thermos of steaming water; a small earthen pot filled with soaked tea leaves, and a small white porcelain pot to pour the tea into; a small white cup with a lid; and an orange tin of tea, showing the tea buds, dried & rolled by hand, before they'd been soaked. He had done part of the preparations at home, in order to have time to do the rest in class.

We ate fresh salami, soft brie cheese, crumbling blue cheese, onion bread, macaroni salad, and cocoa-dusted truffles, followed by an amazing presentation, history, and serving of the tea.

"You know," I said, as we were finishing out tea and handing the cups back, "In a Russian rehearsal, I would dismiss you all right now. Rehearsal is not going to get any better than this." They laughed. "But, as long as we're here, we might as well do some Stanislavski."

So on we went -- to Alexei Sergeevich's Given Circumstances, Imaginary Circumstances, and then explorations of the use of Animal, Sound, Color, and Shoes in character development.

What a perfect time for that profoundly intentional tea to appear -- on the day that the actors are learning how to intentionally, in great solitude, meet their character, their text, and their own selves. The day of Given Circumstances is a day of tools. Like a gardener being handed their first spade -- it's heavy, iron, and it works.

I remember when Mark Williams, my acting teacher with whom I had studied for a year, was teaching his final class before moving to California. I was listening, knowing I would be taking over as teacher when he left. To my disappointment, he didn't do any of the magic of theatre. He just settled into a long talky explanation of the opening of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, and did the dryest analysis of Given Circumstances -- the time, the snow, the trains in Russia, how often a train came in those days and what it meant, how far it would have been from the estate to the train station, how cold it was, what Lopakhin's day would have been like, that he could not stay awake till 2:00am to meet it.

I stopped listening. I'd heard Leonid say it all before, and I was sad Mark was leaving.

On the way out, Mark looked at me with that swift practical Special-Forces glance he sometimes got -- he had been in the Special Forces for 7 years -- a military commander's look, and said, "Did you get all that? That was for you."

Well, no, I hadn't.

But now I find myself in his place, looking at the mooning students, and hearing -- in the crunch of peanut shells in their play's American bar at closing time, the scream and thunder of the Russian locomotive in silent snows, a century ago.

Ahhhh...

Tonight was the first night of my new DSB -- Drastically Simplified Blocking -- system.

It worked.

"Go here -- say this page. Move there -- say that page." Pools of time appeared, the actors released, and we did two scenes in the time allotted for one. Plus, I stumbled on a great warm-up. After Check-Ins and Art Talk, I just played Enya softly singing for 12 peaceful minutes, while the actors moved around the space in silence, reviewing their blocking & lines on the set. It felt like we had hours. When they had calmly finished and we ran it the first time, we had saved easily 30 minutes.

These are the win-win techniques I like: Ones that make order-of-magnitude differences; that get way more accomplished, in far less time, with spilling peace.

Like Leonid Anisimov says -- "When we begin rehearsal, first we must slow down time."

Cats cracked it

We rehearsed REECE & POOPAY last night in Holly's home. Both actors have and love cats, and their cats are magnificent. They move like lions, in their calm comfort & assurance.

The scene cracked all over the place.

Sitting on a real couch, interacting with three giant cats, everything got real. The words just get more human, when the guy saying them has a huge cat stretched out on his lap -- or when the woman saying them is carrying a loudly purring cat.

It was an easy crack -- not a showy one, a melty one. Like watching an image go from blurry, into clear focus.

REECE & POOPAY both love cats. That's the crack.

And, the cats approved of rehearsal. They lay on the script, curled in the nooks of the couch where the cushion had been removed, sprawled on the couch, and yowled loudly when an actor blocked to sit there had to move them.

Simplify

The blocking we need (iron bell)


The blocking I'm doing (Byzantine bell)

I have, I am discovering, a habit of Byzantine blocking -- ornamental, detail upon detail, tiny windows scryed in tiny houses. I developed that habit over years of luxurious time -- having three hours to block a 2-page scene.

It does not work well, in this leaner swifter environment of three hours to block (and rehearse) a 10-to-14-page scene.

I need to lose several levels of detail. Build fewer, simpler, bigger shapes, and let the actors fill them. It's an order-of-magnitude change, not a linear one.

Okay. Off to Driftwood Players with the Costume Designer & Set Designer. Driftwood is a community theatre which is beloved by Seattle theatres, for a) having a vast collection of props, set pieces, and costumes, and b) being willing to lend, at a very cheap price, whatever you need for your show. It costs $35 to pull up to 25 costume pieces (to be returned cleaned), and $35 to borrow props & set pieces. If you borrow a lot of props/set pieces, there is an additional $35 charge.

LATER
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Got some gorgeous set pieces. A lush, pristine orange, cream, and blue carpet that's never been used -- which in a blackbox theatre is a source of light. A spidery secretary and equally delicate end table. A green velveteen robe, cut so classically it would work for the 40's, the 50's, or the 80's.

Cracking the play, finding the cane

There is a point when a play -- or scene, or character -- "cracks". Where some level of resistance and mask drops away, and the true essence of OUR play is revealed.

We have not hit that yet. Until we get there, I always feel like I am going out of my skin. It is always hard, always a search, always the first time. Cracking comes out of the unconsciouses involved. All you can do is seed it, and pay attention. Just because the last play cracked, does not mean this one will. Each time you must find the cliff and walk off it.

"Acting is playwriting is directing," says playwright John Patrick Shanley, of this search. We all start blind.

Some of the best stimulus for this, so far, has come from Lara & Keith, who are as wrapped around this script as they are around their own films. Keith said the other day, he sees them eventually becoming a creative force like the Lord of the Rings director/wife team -- and I agree. They already feel that way. It feels like I am collaborating with professional filmmakers -- creative, soulful, intelligent, and businesslike, but with completely different chops & references from mine. For the first time in a long time, I feel uneducated.

Lara is having unique visions of each character. Her visions are more specific than either mine or the actors', at this point. This is a first for me, and incredibly delicate & powerful.

Keith spotted a spidery metal medical cane the other day, while Lara was costume shopping -- which was tall, wobbly, with four splayed feet at the bottom. With it, suddenly Reece's 70-year-old character blossomed. Everything changed, lightened. The other actors giggled. He began leaning, lunging, and favoring like a pro.

In our town, the ballet, opera, two big theatres, and sports arena are all right next to each other. So the biggest factor for rehearsals is whether the Sonics have a game -- when they do, traffic mires. I like that, in a chaotic "everything's connected" sort of way.

But still -- until things crack, I'm like a caged tiger.

I believe this building pressure is actually part of the key to cracking -- at some point, abandoning all rational knowledge is finally preferable to the intolerable pressure. This time, I am also searching for different tools to crack it -- most of the tools I normally use, require time we don't have.

"Make time," says Leonid.

"Part of the skill of having the skill, is being able to do it fast," says Bart.

Joseph Lavy just looks.

My teachers are calmly ruthless.

I also need to consciously do the practices that accelerate cracking for me. Leonid says, the director is the little wheel in a diesel engine, that must turn steadily before the big wheel of the actors begins to turn. "For two hours, the little wheel of the director must turn," he says, "Before the big wheel will move."

Suzuki slow tens

I taught the Acting in Performance actors Suzuki slow-tens on Sunday. (Tadashi Suzuki, the theatre guy, not the violin one.) I was nervous, as I had no guest artists, and would have to demonstrate it myself.

I took a deep breath, and thought -- okay, just search for the pure form. Focus on what your teachers said. Just DO. It worked, they could all do it beautifully. That is a testament to the luminosity of the technique, not to the overweight out-of-shape body which was fighting for drowned balance.

Slowtens charge the air more than almost any technique I know. Our room felt like a cathedral -- like it was 4 stories high, and nothing but windows. The air felt ionized, like air by a lake, surrounded by salal, dogwood, and damp black earth.

"Move without disturbing the air," says Robyn Hunt. "The masters can move at a full run without disturbing the air."

Missing my brother

My brother lives in Alaska. Most of the time this seems exotic to me, and just right for my loves-the-outdoors brother. But ever since this summer when he and I reconnected -- and Thanksgiving when I got to know my niece & nephews -- now it feels too far. I wish he was about two hours away -- far enough for privacy, but close enough to drive over on a Sunday.

Ah well. He had a birthday recently, so I've been thinking of him.

Ever since he was five, he wanted kids. Ever since I was little, I wanted to be an artist. Now he's got three kids and I'm a theatre director.

Oil light

Periodically, the oil light would start flashing in my car. Dutifully, I would add oil. It got to be a rhythm -- every 3 or 4 weeks the light would come on, and I would add oil. I began carrying extra quarts of oil in my car, figuring my car had just gotten to "that age," and I'd better be prepared.

Well, tonight the light kept going on, all the way to rehearsal. Ian looked at it. "See these two holes?" he said, pointing to two small holes an inch apart, at the bottom of the dipstick. "The bottom one means "Add oil." The top one means, "Full."" He pointed about 7 inches up the dipstick. "This is how much oil you have. You're drowning in oil. Get an oil change NOW."

He said only because it's an Acura was it able to tolerate this -- most engines would have quit by now.

"Your light isn't on to say "Add oil," he said. "Your light is freaking out because of how much is in there."

Tomorrow is Oil Change Day.